


Where The Wild Things Are

by Charlynch



Series: Bloodletting [2]
Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Bloodletting Universe, F/F, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-07-10 08:59:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlynch/pseuds/Charlynch
Summary: Four part series of oneshots touching on the development of Liv and Sonya's relationship in Bloodletting. This fic does contain Bloodletting spoilers for stuff that hasn't been published yet, so tread with caution. These oneshots occur at different time periods throughout the story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for the buffest mail order bride of my dreams, slickasabiscuit on tumblr

The evening air was thick and hazy, glistering with looping drifts of golden pollen, even the moonlight seeming to exude a creamy warmth like the soft glow of a paraffin lamp. Amongst all of it, moonbathing in the violet dusk, Liv lolled in the grass. Tiny creeping things crawled through the pink spread of her hair, moths settling briefly on her skin before fluttering upward again, leaving a fine bronze dust in their wake.  
“You look dead,” Becky said, tapping Liv in the ribs with the toe of her boot.  
“I’m listening to the nighttime,” Liv replied, as though that explained anything, her expression earnest. Becky shrugged the response off and trailed back to where Charlotte had managed to get a bonfire going. Thin wisps of smoke curled elegantly upward like the wake of a lady’s cigarette, before shifting to a darker, crackling belch as the fire caught properly and established itself in the kindling.  
“She okay?” Charlotte asked absently, prodding the glowing timber. Sparks gasped and fluttered upward to pop and creak, catching in her breath like an inhalation of stars and drifting for a few moments before dying and sinking to the grass. Becky felt like ember, all lit and buoyed on Charlotte’s flame, ready to burn out and flutter into ash at any moment.  
“You don’t have to worry over her so much,” Nattie said, sitting crosslegged beside Charlotte and looking rather sage. “You’re not even her sire. Let her be.”  
“She’s an odd duck,” Becky said, seating herself as close to the fire as she dared. She glanced back over at Liv, lying perfectly still in the grass, white as doves in the moonlight. As if in parallel, Ruby's prone form seemed dark and troubled, even in the glow of the fire. Becky could see her eyes reflecting the firelight, catlike in the dark.  
“But she’s ours,” Charlotte reminded her. “And we take care of our own. Even if they’re a bit strange. So long as she’s not in danger, she can do as she likes.”  
In amongst the grass and flowers, Liv breathed, grateful to be away from Ruby, who smelled of only death these days. The wind crept past her lips like a lover’s sigh, pushing into the myriad branches of her lungs. She blew out a warm breath, watching as the tiny aureate motes of pollen distorted in her breeze, minuscule eddies of floral dust whirling in slow motion across a lavender sky. Somewhere, far off, a wolf howled mournfully. Liv sat bolt upright.  
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Charlotte called, Liv’s sudden movement catching her eye. “Just wild things.”  
“Not a sound you hear often any more,” Nattie remarked. “Wonder how the girls are getting on with Paige? She wasn't terribly impressed with me leaving her behind. Felt she had a right to come with us to speak with Asuka.”  
Liv tuned out their voices, listening hard between the intermittent snapping of the fire and the soft susurrus of the wind through the grass. She waited for the wolf to call again, but the sound only seemed to echo against the sky, a ghost; had the others not acknowledged it, Liv might’ve believed she’d imagined it.  
She glanced back at the fire, briefly, making certain her companions were preoccupied, before she slowly got to her feet and crept away, the fire’s glow ebbing in her wake as she wandered further into the darkness. It seemed to close around her, swallowing her whole until even the pink smudge of her hair couldn't be seen against the shadowy landscape. Ruby watched her go, brows knitting in dazed confusion.

As soon as she'd cleared the tree line and the light of the fire seemed far away, Liv had broken into a run, trying to remember where the sound had come from. She quickly found herself lost in completely unfamiliar landscape that seemed worlds away from the campsite. She slipped on roots and scraped her knees, and leaped over creeks and staggered through streams, a wild thing in the wild dark. When she picked up the scent, Liv let out a whispered, triumphant cheer; her ears had not deceived her. That was not the cry of any ordinary wolf. Emboldened by her correct assessment and the quiet knowledge that she was no longer technically lost, Liv continued on. Briefly, she wondered if the others would follow, or if they'd assume she was simply hunting. She paused to listen and glance behind her, but as far as she could tell, she was alone. Alone besides the wolf; as she staggered into a clearing, it lay like a great, sagging drift of starless sky, so black it seemed to suck the moonlight out of its surroundings. It’s sides rose and fell with laboured breathing as it turned its huge head to look down a long, tapered muzzle at the cause of its distress; an old, rusted trap snapped closed clean on an unsuspecting hind paw. Blood founted, slick and dark as tar, matting in the creature’s grand, brush-like tail. The blood reeked, pine sap and iron and dying flowers.  
“If you shift back, it might be easier to get off,” Liv suggested, clambering through the foliage to crouch a few feet away. The wolf drew its lips back over enormous, glistening white teeth, each one at least as long as one of Liv’s fingers, as it rumbled a thunderous warning growl. Liv hissed back, bristling at the hostility.  
“Don't be so rude, I'm here to help you, idiot,” Liv pouted, moving to the wolf's side fearlessly. The creature threatened to snap at her, its immense jaws quivering as another snarl burbled deep within its chest. Liv paid no mind, her pink hair falling into her face as she neatly pried the trap open, the rusted metal no match for vampire strength. The wolf scrambled to its feet awkwardly, raising the injured paw high off the ground as it turned to lick at its wounds.  
“If you turn back, I can have a look at the injury,” Liv suggested, but the wolf merely looked at her. “Look, my bestie's a werewolf. I'm not weird about you guys or anything. Besides, if I wanted to hurt you or eat you or whatever, I could've done it whilst you were trapped.”  
The wolf let out a very human sigh, and Liv politely looked away whilst the wolf shifted. In its place, a woman sat in the dirt, her leg mangled. Her dark hair was swept into a ponytail out of her face, her skin tanned and lightly freckled. Her dark eyes blazed, her strong brows lowered with suspicion. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other, Liv taking in the woman's features with quiet awe.  
“You're pretty,” Liv murmured, crouching down to look into her captive's eyes.  
“You're not one of Asuka's?” the woman asked cautiously.  
“Nope. My name's Liv,” Liv chirped, moving to lift the woman bridal style into her arms without waiting for her to introduce herself.  
“Well seeing as you've literally just picked my whole ass up like it was nothing, I should probably at least give you my name,” the dark-haired woman conceded gruffly. “I'm Sonya. So if you're not Asuka's, what are you doing on her turf? Who sired you?”  
“We're looking for her because my sire's sick. Charlotte says she'll know what's wro-” Liv began.  
“Hang on, you're one of Charlotte's?” Sonya asked abruptly, turning in Liv's arms to look at her with surprise.  
“You know Charlotte?” Liv asked, beginning to make her way back toward the camp as best as she could remember, following the scent of the fire on the wind.  
“I knew Charlotte,” Sonya replied. “Emphasis on the past tense. And you shouldn't be getting mixed up in Asuka's business. I know you're all vampires, but she's... there's something wrong about her. Something unnatural, even for a vamp. She's meddling in dark business.”  
“If it helps Ruby, then I don't mind what she meddles in,” Liv replied pleasantly, trying to take less bouncy strides so as not to jostle Sonya's injury.  
“Ahh! You're Ruby's kid? God, you gotta catch me up on all the vamp gossip,” Sonya said, seeming to relax now she knew for sure Liv had nothing to do with Asuka. Liv nodded, cheerfully musing on how happy Charlotte would be that Liv had found an old friend of hers.

  


“Thought you'd seen the last of me!” Sonya roared triumphantly as Liv set her down on the grass before Charlotte, who looked at her with distaste.  
“Clearly I was suffering under the burden of tremendous optimism,” Charlotte responded wryly. Liv looked between them, glowingly awaiting praise for bringing something interesting back to camp. Before Sonya could reply, she abruptly clamped her hand over her nose and mouth.  
“What the fuck is that smell? Smells like fuckin' death,” Sonya choked through her fingers.  
“Ruby,” Becky answered. “We dunno why it's happenin' but she's gone... all fusty. So we're lookin' to have Asuka try and fix it. I'm Becky by the way.”  
“Love the accent,” Sonya said, raising an eyebrow at Becky with a crooked smile. At the same moment as Liv felt a strange little burst of jealousy at Sonya complimenting Becky, she felt Charlotte bristling, stalking to Becky's side and draping her arm possessively around her waist. “Relax Chuck, I'm not interested in poaching your shiny new bloodbag.”  
“And just like that, the compliment suddenly don't seem so nice,” Becky said with mock offence. “You and Charlotte got history then?”  
“Yes,” Charlotte interrupted, her tone clipped. “And I'd rather not discuss it. Liv, do whatever you're doing with your stray, but you have to feed her and walk her and pay her vet bills.”  
Sonya growled quietly, her face suddenly seeming more wolfish by the second, but Charlotte spat back, hissing like a great cat, her fangs extended viciously.  
“She's just being a bitch because she's stressed,” Liv said brightly as Charlotte stormed off with Becky in tow, no doubt to feed and find somewhere to sleep before dawn broke.  
“She must always be stressed,” Sonya joked and Liv snorted.  
“You know her. She's a sweetheart really,” Liv reasoned, carefully trying to roll up Sonya's jeans. “I can't get at the wound. Can you... Sorry if this is weird, but can you take your jeans off? Just so I can try deal with this.”  
Sonya nodded and peeled her jeans off without a moment's hesitation, unabashed at the concept of being in a state of undress in front of somebody she'd met barely an hour ago.  
“So cool,” Liv murmured, noting Sonya's decision to wear boxers. Sonya smirked at her, though she winced slightly as she extended her injured leg. With her jeans off, she could clearly see the white glint of bone; the world seemed to whirl and tilt, and her vision was full of stars, a strange vertigo consuming her as she gazed into the sky. She'd fallen onto her back, and the world had slid back into place around her on a slight, dizzying delay.  
“Hey, it's okay,” Liv soothed. “It's best if you don't look.”  
“Sorry, I'm not usually so... squeamish,” Sonya mumbled, feeling foolish.  
“Nah boo, it's fine. You know your brain is hardwired to freak out when sees stuff that should be on the inside on the outside, right? Natural response,” Liv told her comfortingly. “Try not to look. I think you managed to get away without breaking the bone, you've just really fucked up... well, everything else.”  
“Of-fuckin'-course,” Sonya groaned. “Jesus, not to be a pussy but it fuckin' hurts.”  
“It's supposed to, dummy. That's your body telling you something's wrong,” Liv said patiently, before sinking her fangs into her own wrist. “This might sting a little.”  
Sonya held her breath as Liv let her blood drip from wrist into Sonya's leg wound, letting out a muffled yelp of pain when the blood made contact. The blood seemed to sizzle and disperse into the tissue, which rapidly began to look less angry, the bleeding slowing as the fibres of muscle started to knit together, little chains of cells forming, encouraged by the vampire blood to heal the wound. The self-inflicted bite on Liv's wrist was almost completely gone within a minute, only a vague, pale scar remaining.  
“Hey, it's working faster than usual,” Liv remarked in surprise, Sonya sitting up to look and abruptly falling backward again. Liv flopped down beside her. “Not that fast. Maybe don't look at it for a bit. It's still gonna be pretty gnarly for the next few days, but looks like it's already started healing.”  
“We must just be a good match,” Sonya shrugged, rolling over onto her side with difficulty to look at Liv properly. Her blue eyes were bright with interest, mapping the planes of Sonya's face rapidly, flicking from feature to feature as though she was trying to memorise everything as quickly as possible.  
“Must be,” Liv replied, gasping softly with surprise as Sonya clapped her on the shoulder.  
“Thanks for the help, kid,” Sonya said, flashing her a winning smile before easing herself into sitting position and scooting closer to the fire to sit by Becky, who was heating some water to wash her wound with. Liv rolled over onto her belly, her heart sinking. “Kid”. How dismissive could you get? Liv tried to convince herself Sonya was rude, but in the back of her mind, she still felt her heart flutter.  
“She's so damn cool,” Liv whispered, facedown in the grass.  
“Don't tell me _that_ 's your first love,” Charlotte said, a derisive edge to her voice. “You poor thing.”  
“Leave me alone,” Liv mumbled through a mouthful of grass. “Let me be miserable in peace.”  
“You got it,” Charlotte shrugged. “But this is why we don't go outside. You can catch all kinds of nasty diseases. Like feelings.”  
With that, Charlotte sauntered away toward the fireside to check on Ruby with Nattie. Liv blew out an irritated sigh into the dirt. Of course. Like she didn't have enough going on. Wandering the woods with a human, two vampires and what might as well be a vampire zombie was the perfect time to encounter one's first romantic interest. What had Charlotte described it as? “Catching feelings.” Liv glanced over at Sonya, feeling her pulse quicken as she shifted where she sat, turning her head slightly to speak to Becky. The barest glimpse of her smile was enough to make Liv groan softly and turn her face back toward the earth. This was bad; Sarah wasn't even here to help, Ruby wasn't coherent enough to tell her how to flirt, and Charlotte was no help at all.  
“Well shit. Guess I'm gonna have to do this by myself.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter prob doesn’t make much sense because the events of bloodletting it’s based around haven’t happened yet lmao

Of all the fires, Sonya remembered the first fire with the most clarity; over time, the rest had melted into a miasma of noxious smoke and vermillion light, quivering behind a heat haze. It felt like Liv had taken her home and she’d brought bad luck with her, tangled like burrs in her fur. Maybe all those legends advising to “beware a black dog” had more truth than people realised. 

The sky flickered ominously, glowing a strange yellow against the purple backdrop of the evening. Smoke rose in a dark spume.

“What’s up with the sky?” Liv asked, leaning out of the car window for a better look as Sonya hastily grabbed her waist to prevent her falling out.

“Looks like a fire,” Nattie commented. “A big one.” 

“That’s over near our side of town,” Becky added worriedly. “I hope everybody’s okay.”

Ruby, curled up asleep in the backseat, let out a soft whimper as if to punctuate Becky’s concern. 

“Asuka said she’d be asleep for three days. We need to make sure we have somewhere safe to take her,” Charlotte said, her tone cold and emotionless. “If it is The Garden, we need to find somewhere else, and we need to find it quickly.”

“Alexa’s place?” Liv suggested, wiggling back in the window and onto Sonya’s lap. With Nattie, Ruby, Sonya and Liv all crammed into the back seat, the car felt overcrowded and uncomfortable. Sonya’s injured leg ached, squished against the front seat.

“Alexa’s place is probably no safer. It’s been empty for ages. Months, even. I’m not sure it’s still... fit to be lived in,” Becky replied, frowning.

“I can check it out for you if you guys are worried they’re having some kind of... uh... stake out,” Sonya said. “I dunno, can I say that? Is that offensive?”

“That’s an idea,” Charlotte agreed grudgingly. “The police were poking around there back when we last had... some issues whilst hunting, but that was a while ago. Now it‘s those anti-vamp idiots we’ve got to worry about.”

“Well we don’t even know if anything has happened to The Garden yet,” Nattie reassured her gently. “The girls haven’t gotten in touch with us. If something was wrong, they would’ve.”

Becky tapped out a quick text to the group chat. 

Looks like fire. Everything okay?

Almost immediately, Carmella responded.

We’re hiding. Police are everywhere because of the fire. 

“Mella says they’re hidin’?” Becky relayed, confusion colouring her words. A tendon twitched in the back of Charlotte’s hand on the wheel. Becky’s screen lit up as Liv asked the chat why they were hiding.

creepy church got set on fire and bc of all the anti-vamp shit, police think we did it .

Sasha’s reply was enough to make Charlotte pull over.

“We need to call them,” Charlotte said sharply, worry creasing her brow. “Make sure they’re safe. Once I get back, I can smooth everything over with the police.”

“If they’re hiding, it might not be safe to call them,” Nattie reasoned. “Find out where they are, we can go get them and figure out what’s going on.”

As Charlotte, Nattie and Becky proceeded to try and figure out their next move, Sonya noted the way nobody seemed to ask Liv what she thought. Nobody paused to hear her suggestions, to reassure her, or even include her in the conversation.

“You okay?” Sonya asked her quietly. Liv turned to look at her, almost surprised that somebody, anybody, was asking. 

“Huh? Yeah, no, I’m fine, I’m just uh... not very good at this kind of serious stuff. Planning and figuring things out and staying out of trouble, shit like that. So I just try not to get in their way,” Liv replied in an undertone. Her face was perfectly expressionless, her voice even, but great fat tears began to creep down her cheeks in silvery trickles. 

“Liv... you okay?” Sonya asked again, her tone prodding, giving her a little squeeze. She’d barely known Liv a day, but she found herself drawn to her warmth, the sunshine of her voice and her smile so infectious that Sonya could hardly keep herself from smiling in her presence. Liv shook her head so infinitesimally that Sonya mightn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been looking for it; Charlotte, Becky and Nattie certainly didn’t notice. Ruby slept on, troubled and restless in sleep, her expression pained.

“I don’t want them to take Ruby back,” she said decisively, her voice small and reedy as she sniffed slightly. “I saw what they did to her, I don’t want to risk that for any of us.” 

“You’ll be okay,” Sonya told her, putting her arm around Liv’s narrow shoulders. “Charlotte won’t let anything happen to you. You know you cry the most of all the vampires I’ve ever known?”

Liv was about to be offended, but Sonya’s teasing smile softened her.

“I didn’t used to be. When I was human, I mean. I wasn’t a crybaby at all, I was pretty tough. Being turned threw all my emotions out of whack,” Liv explained, rubbing her eyes with her sleeve, smudging eyeliner into her cheek. “It’s like the volume on everything has been turned up crazy high, everything is wild intense.”

“It sounds exhausting,” Sonya sympathised, gently resting her cheek against Liv’s back as Liv sat in her lap. 

“How’s your leg?”

“Healing like a dream.”

Liv nodded, trying to hide the small frisson of pride that flickered through her; she’d healed Sonya’s leg, by herself. Never, since she’d turned, had Liv ever thought she’d be capable of healing anything. Being a vampire felt naturally destructive; to have the strength to take pause and help others seemed like a tremendous achievement that had previously been quite out of reach. 

“You look a bit pale, Liv,” Charlotte’s voice cut through the quiet, and Liv balked, ashamed suddenly of her moment of pride. “When did you last feed?”

“Uhhh... Not yesterday but the day before maybe?” Liv answered with an awkward shrug. Discussing such bloody matters in front of Sonya felt wrong somehow, almost vulgar. She hadn’t the prescience to guess that Sonya, having tangled with Charlotte in the past, was more than likely intimately familiar with vampire feeding habits and wouldn’t be at all scandalised at any blaze mention of a vampiric dinner. Charlotte tossed a bloodbag into the back seat, Sonya catching it with lazily perfect reflexes. She passed it to Liv with a smile.

“Want me to open it for you?” Sonya offered, nodding at Liv’s trembling hands. Liv shook her head, taking the bag shamefacedly. 

“I uh... feel weird about drinking it in front you...” Liv managed to murmured, picking at the edge of the bag whilst fiercely trying to avoid Sonya’s eyes.

“Look at you, turning back into a person again,” Nattie commented, one sharp brow raised. “This your first grown up grandbaby, Charlie?”

Charlotte shrugged, her arms tense; she was clearly irked by the “grandbaby” remark. Liv studied the patrician outline of her profile as she turned to answer Nattie; she supposed Charlotte didn’t really seem much like a grandmother anyway.

“I don’t know. I don’t put tracking collars on everybody I turn,” Charlotte replied coldly. 

“Maybe you should,” Sonya quipped. “Might have saved you all that time wandering around looking for Alexa.”

There was a sizzling pause; Becky became acutely aware of Charlotte’s muscles tensing as she prepared to strike, bunching like a great angry cat about to bounce. At the same moment, Sonya’s face was very much more wolfish; somehow still very human, and yet deeply animal. She seemed almost predatory, eyes bestial and expression brutish. 

“Hey Nattie,” Becky’s voice, slightly higher than it ought to be, served to break the tension. “What do you mean by turning back into a person?”

Charlotte relaxed, though her pupils were still enormously dilated, kittenish in the half-light. Liv watched Sonya’s face, trying to understand the shift between wolf and woman, but it seemed she turned from a wild thing back to human somewhere between Liv’s blinks. She seemed almost like a lenticular picture, shifting and shimmering into something else depending on the angle. 

“Babies lose a lot of their “humanity” when they first turn. Heightened aggression, lowered levels of disgust and guilt, a lack of self-consciousness or embarrassment, all that stuff,” Nattie explained. “People always treat newbies like they’re just regular vampires but crazy angry, which is uh, a bit of a misstep to say the least.”

“So they’re like hormonal teenagers?” Sonya prompted.

“In a word, yes. If hormonal teenagers wouldn’t bat an eyelash at the idea of disembowelling somebody.” 

“Most wouldn’t.”

Becky studied Liv’s face curiously. That explained why Liv had been so ready to tear the scientists down in the labs apart, why she’d never balked at feeding from whoever was available, why she seemed totally oblivious to her own dazed, childish neediness. Briefly, Becky wondered if Alexa and Sasha had been half as petulant and cuddly as newly turned vamps; she could picture them both hassling Charlotte like a pair of whining, bloodthirsty children. Sonya, meanwhile, looked entirely nonplussed.

“How much of a nightmare was newly turned Charlotte?” Becky asked with a sly smirk, ducking to avoid a swift shove from an irate Charlotte. Nattie smiled fondly at Charlotte, a motherly twinkle in her eye.

“She was uncontrollable, and so damn big and strong that there was very little I could do to keep her from doing what she wanted,” Nattie said with a throaty chuckle. “She went for a good rampage, tired herself out and came home meek as a lamb.”

Liv pondered quietly throughout this conversation, her manicured brows inching lower and lower as her frown deepened. Eventually, she spoke up, her voice a tremulous bell amongst the raucous teasing between Charlotte and Nattie. 

“If the church is on fire,” Liv said slowly. “What’s happening to all the vampires underneath.”

“Oh fuck,” Charlotte gasped.

“Oh fuck indeed. We need to find the girls and try to figure out if the St Philomena prisoners are safe,” Nattie instructed, seeming to shift into autopilot.

“Does fire kill vampires?” Becky asked tentatively.

“If there’s nothing left to regenerate, then yes. And sometimes, even we can’t heal bad burn scars all the way,” Charlotte answered without taking her eyes off the road as she gained speed, weaving around the meandering traffic on the highway. Liv gazed out of the window, wondering how it would feel to regenerate from a pile of ash.

“I’ve got you,” Sonya murmured, squeezing her slightly. “We’ll sort it out.”

Everything blazed, singeing Liv’s eyebrows and eyelashes, spitting vicious coloured sparks up into her face with every step. She breathed the suffocating smoke, inhaling and exhaling in black, quietly pretending to be a dragon so she could forget the way the hot air boiled the lining of her lungs with every breath. As Liv clambered through the smouldering debris of the passageways beneath the church, it quickly became apparent that St Philomena’s had evacuated their prisoners before they set the fire. Relief flooded her as she spat a mouthful of ash onto the tile and watched with fascination as her spit sizzled away to nothing but a smear.

She wondered if Sonya and Charlotte were still fighting, too caught up their argument over whether or not Liv should be the one to go inside to notice her deciding for herself. She couldn’t hear Sonya’s voice echoing down the halls after her anymore; was she too far away, or had she given up on her? As she came to the last unexplored sector of the warren of tunnels and cells, she was faced with an enormous door, a huge, hulking slab that seemed almost comically outsized against the sooty tiled wall. She raised a hand and gave the door a small push, her skin melting a palm print to the door as she pulled away. 

“Locked,” Liv said out loud to nobody in particular.

“Help me open it,” responded a faint voice from the other side, with an accent Liv couldn’t place. Although not in the habit of following instructions provided by disembodied voices, Liv obliged, grimacing as her flesh stuck to the door and began to bubble with the heat as she pulled. Somebody on the other side pushed with all their might, somebody strong. Liv, delirious with pain, wondered if they were as strong as Charlotte, or even Sasha, as the door finally swung open, the hinges buckling.

“Thank you,” the vampire attached to the voice said, with a polite nod. Her dark eyes glittered as she studied Liv through the thick smog. “You’re hurt pretty bad. Let me carry you out.”

Liv could offer little but to crumple into the girl’s arms, her ruined hands linking around her shoulders as she effortlessly lifted her up and began to walk through the fire. Somewhere, through the dark, Sonya’s voice sang her home; it pierced the smoke, an evening breeze in the stifling heat. Liv began to cry. 


End file.
